‘Fiscal cliff’ would have serious consequences, says Wrighton

Washington University in St. Louis Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton has written the Missouri congressional delegation to express continued concerns about the serious negative impact that sequestration, expiring tax provisions, and other elements of the “fiscal cliff” could have on the mission of higher education and the nation as a whole.

Researchers explore the ocean floor with rare instrument

Courtesy of Monterey Bay Area Research InstituteA fish on the ocean floor off California gazes at a sight no human has seen first-hand: a modified Raman spectrometer gathering data on a carbon dioxide sample.In collaboration with oceanographers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), a team of geologists at Washington University in St. Louis is using a rare instrument on the ocean floor just west of California. One of their earliest projects was to see if it’s possible to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it on the ocean floor. It’s the first deployment of the Raman spectrometer on the ocean floor.